Dicing manually involves making parallel cuts in three sets, the cutting directions of each set being orthogonal. To produce cubes, the spacing of cuts must be even and, if using a knife, the item to be cut must be turned at least once, so culinary hand tools continue to maintain a place in many kitchens, despite the proliferation of electrically powered food processors, because of their capacity to perform tasks such as dicing.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,587,968 describes a culinary hand tool including two orthogonal cutting grids through which an item is pressed sequentially to dice it into cubes: a first cutting grid that is upright and has square openings and a second that is horizontal with rectangular openings. A pivoting handle drives a horizontal pusher to press the item through the first grid and, with continued turning, the handle then abuts a vertical pusher that pushes the item (now cut into strips) down through the second cutting grid.
Although the above culinary tool is generally suitable for dicing and slicing, it has a number of drawbacks. Firstly, to free the path for diced product to drop out, the tool must be mounted so that the second cutting grid projects from the edge of a bench, or a like support, on which the tool rests. Further, the tool itself is quite complicated, with the second pusher and associated guides and return springs not only adding to manufacturing cost but also making cleaning and reassembly time consuming. In addition, near the end of the horizontal pusher's stroke, both the horizontal and vertical pushers advance at the same time, and so this tends to increase the torque that the user must apply via the handle, stresses the blades of the second cutting grid, and tends to cause binding when cutting hard items. Accordingly, there remains room for improvement in the area of culinary tools that process food materials, that are easy to operate, and that are relatively uncomplicated for low cost and ease of operation and cleaning.